All this talk about the office of the President, be it how Trump is or is not fit for it or who among his Democratic challengers represents our best chance for positive change, reminds us of the strength and character of Jack Brooks, perhaps the best-suited analyst of the Oval Office in our history. A Texas Democrat, Brooks served for nearly fifty years under ten presidents, some of them among our best (John F. Kennedy), our worst (Richard Nixon), and our most complex (Lyndon B. Johnson). With the recent release of the first biography on his life, titled The Meanest Man in Congress, the late Jack Brooks has finally begun to receive the recognition he deserves for his political acumen and ability to work both sides of the aisle in pushing through important (i.e., the Civil Rights Act) legislation. Several book events have brought Brooks’s story to interested audiences, including a singular program with opening reception at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum. There, moderator Henrik Hertzberg (The New Yorker) spoke with co authors Tim and Brendan McNulty about Brooks’s legacy to a packed house. The program can be viewed thanks to C-SPAN’s Book TV. In a related development, The Jack Brooks Foundation was officially launched, an organization devoted to perpetuating Brooks’s ideals and legacy. A first initiative: The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History is partnering with the foundation to digitize Brooks’s papers so that they are available to political historians and scholars in the years to come.

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Neither Congresswoman Terri Sewell nor Benjamin Sterling Turner were born in Dallas County, Alabama, but both came to represent the 7th District of Alabama with fervor and dedication. Turner was born a slave and rose to be Alabama’s first African American representative in Congress. 140 years after Turner took office, Terri Sewell was put in charge of the 7th district, the first African American woman to do so. After the recent publication of The Slave Who Went to Congress—an illustrated children’s book detailing Turner’s early life and political career—Congresswoman Sewell visited Clark Elementary in Selma with authors Frye Gaillard and Marti Rosner and gifted students there fifty copies of the book. Sewell movingly told the schoolchildren attending her program that she “stands on the shoulders of Benjamin Sterling Turner,” who paved the way for her civil service with his bold
choice to run for office. This incredible intersection of history reminds us of how important historymakers like Turner and Sewell are; the effects of their leadership can be felt in Dallas County today. The Slave Who Went to Congress—which the Midwest Book Review calls “a choice pick for personal, school, and library collections”—is a powerful account of an impactful life and, importantly, introduces Turner’s remarkable story of bravery and leadership to children around the world.

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As school choice sparks national conversation–from the State of the Union address, where Trump derided ‘failing government schools’ and touted legislation that would divert up to five billion dollars in federal funding to private schools, to the Democratic debate stage in South Carolina–Steve Suitts’s incisive, timely analysis, Overturning Brown: The Segregationist Legacy of the Modern School Choice Movement, is already gathering well-deserved attention and praise. Booklist called it “a masterful, highly readable account of an American tragedy,” and Publishers Weekly said: “Suitts presents a damning portrait of the historic motivations behind privatization. Teachers, policy makers, and progressive activists would do well to take heed.” In a Washington Post column, Jay Mathews deemed Overturning Brown “a provocative argument on segregation, school choice, and shared language.” Get a preview of some of the book’s key arguments in Steve’s recent op-ed in the Daily Beast, check out the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for an alarming history of the term “government schools,” and listen to Steve’s interview with the New Books Network. Overturning Brown has also earned praise in Kirkus Reviews,  Forbes, and the Progressive. And stay tuned: Georgia Public Broadcasting’s “On Second Thought” will air an interview with Steve on March 27, in advance of his Carter Center event with Shirley Franklin on March 31. In the weeks and months to come we expect we’ll hear a lot more about Overturning Brown and its compelling, essential call for genuine education equity.

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For Halloween 2019, Dilcy Windham Hilley–daughter of legendary Southern folklorist Kathryn Tucker Windham–helped us arrange this treat for our readers: an abridged audio recording of “A Promise Kept,” one of Windham’s selections for Jeffrey’s Favorite 13 Ghost Stories. For Southerners, and many outside the South, Kathryn Tucker Windham’s beloved Jeffrey’s stories are practically synonymous with Halloween. These are the perfect blend of reality and imagination with a dash of spooky atmosphere, just true enough to scare more than your average tall tale. Enjoy this special audio recording and order your copy of the book for your pleasure next year at www.newsouthbooks.com/jeffrey.

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In celebration of the publication of Ruth Beaumont Cook’s new history of Sylacauga marble, Magic in Stone: The Sylacauga Marble Story, the B. B. Comer Memorial Library pulled out all the stops for a very special launch event that brought in some impressive company, including library patrons and friends, the mayor of the city of Sylacauga, Jim Heigl, and special guests Craigger Browne, Marcello Giorgi, and Frank Murphy. The event was organized by Ted Spears of the Sylacauga Marble Festival and Shirley Spears and Tracey Thomas of the library. The hundred-plus attendees enjoyed a wonderful reception, followed by a presentation by Cook based on her book, which represents years of research on the internationally famous Sylacauga marble quarry, the first history on the subject ever. Truly this was an event worthy of the story Ruth Beaumont Cook has to tell!

Praise for Magic in Stone has come from many quarters already. See what historians Dr. Leah Atkins and Aileen Kilgore Henderson have to say about the book:

Magic in Stone is a story on a grand scale befitting its subject: marble, which formed with the first seashells that compacted underneath the continental shelf and resulted millions of years later in magnificent works of beauty by giants of talent and fame. The gifted Moretti, the loyal women in his life, and the emergence of an Alabama marble industry and quarry town. This history and much more is told by Ruth Cook in a memorable and richly detailed book. — Aileen Kilgore Henderson, author of Eugene Allen Smith’s Alabama: How a Geologist Shaped a State

From Ruth Cook comes an enjoyable and important work of history about Sylacauga marble — the artists who worked with it, the village that grew up around it, the industry that developed out of it. This excellent book tells the story comprehensively for the first time. It is rich in detail and full of surprising, delightful tidbits about a resource few of us in the state know much about. What a treasure for us as Alabama historians, as Alabama citizens! — Leah Rawls Atkins, Director Emerita, Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities, Auburn University

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Frye Gaillard is no stranger to praise with his large body of over thirty published books on diverse aspects of Southern culture. Among many distinctions, he is the winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award, the Eugene Current-Garcia Award for Distinction in Literary Scholarship, and the Clarence Cason Award. His recently published masterwork, A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s, has received excellent national reviews and has had him touring from Boston to Berkeley; the work was also named to NPR’s Best Books of 2018 list. Earlier this summer, Gaillard was also a recipient of the Alabama Governor’s Arts Award, which recognizes his impressive body of work. The Alabama State Council of the Arts presented the award to Gaillard at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival on May 22 in a celebration of talent which included fellow winners Yvonne Wells for her folk quilting artistry and legendary singer Martha Reeves. The winning of the Alabama Governor’s Art Award for excellence in Southern letters is a high point of Gaillard’s career as a journalist and author, no doubt, but we expect there will be other such accolades for his forthcoming book, The Slave Who Went to Congress, an illustrated children’s book that tells the powerful true story of Benjamin Sterling Turner, the first African American from Alabama and only the second in our nation to enter Congress. Coauthored with Marti Rosner, the book is due out from NewSouth Books in January 2020.

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We are sorry to share news of the passing of Paul M. Gaston, civil rights activist and esteemed Southern historian, who died last month at the age of 91. NewSouth enjoyed a long friendship with Gaston, forged over many years and glasses of wine, which extended across the publication of a half dozen of his books. Our relationship with him began in the early days of NewSouth Books, when Gaston had already changed the lives of dozens of students through his astute observations on the true character of the South and in his activities at the University of Virginia. Gaston was both a superb writer and thinker. He leaves behind many influential works, among them The New South Creed: A Study in Southern Mythmaking, now considered a classic. This brilliant work tackles the ways in which socially constructed realities shape historical understanding. Other titles by Gaston include Coming of Age in Utopia, his memoir; Man and Mission: E.B. Gaston and the Origins of the Fairhope Single Tax Colony; and Women of Fair Hope. Historians in Service of a Better South, also published by NewSouth, is a collection of essays written in Gaston’s honor, to which such leading historians as Ed Ayers, Matthew Lassiter, Robert J. Norrell, and many others contributed. This UVA memoriam speaks powerfully to Gaston’s legacy: https://news.virginia.edu/content/memoriam-historian-paul-gaston-early-civil-rights-activist.

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The early praise for American Founders by Christina Proenza-Coles was, quite simply, outstanding. The book, which released from NewSouth Books in April, was blurbed by leading American historians who called the work “erudite and balanced, a feat of hemispheric synthesis and understanding” (Ben Vinson III, George Washington University, Dean of Columbian College of Arts and Sciences), and said that “it stands as a model of a new kind of hemispheric history” (Joel Dinerstein, Tulane University, Clark Chair of American Civilization), and “gives us a stirring and sweeping history that shows how an appreciation of the freedom struggles of African-descended people changes the whole story of national histories” (David Roediger, University of Kansas, Foundation Professor of American Studies). A starred Publishers Weekly review and praise from Kirkus, Booklist, and others followed. Reviews for the book have been every bit as gratifying. Most recently, The Fayetteville Observer says the book “challenges readers to rethink our national narrative” and boldly states that “African founders helped make America great.” Author Christina Proenza-Coles has been a featured guest on radio across the country, including WOCA in Florida; KPFA in California; and WUNC in North Carolina. Lapham’s Quarterly ran a lengthy excerpt from the work, and the Journal for Blacks in Higher Education spotlighted it on a recent Books of Interest list. The Charlottesville Daily Progress published a special feature on the book and its connections to Virginia. Impeccably researched, this book that proposes a radical rethinking of the American story—suggesting that the narrative about African-descended Americans starts much earlier than is previously understood, even before the founding of our country—should continue to blaze interest and change minds. Amen to that. 

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Much that we know about the years leading up to and immediately after Alabama became a state, in 1819, we take from a single source, Pickett's History of Alabama, and Incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi, from the Earliest Period. The work by Albert J. Pickett, first published in 1851, is considered the very first history of the state. In recent years, Pickett’s History, as it is known for short, has been available chiefly in poor facsimile editions. Even so, the book has been an invaluable resource for scholars studying and writing about Southeastern Indians and the expansion of the young United States into what was known as the “Old Southwest,” the present-day states of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. To celebrate Alabama’s bicentennial, NewSouth Books has published a superb new edition of the work, The Annotated Pickett’s History of Alabama. This magnificent volume is made possible by James P. Pate, a scholar in the field, who has devoted almost two decades to a painstaking annotation of Pickett’s original two-volume work. Dr. Pate verified Pickett’s sources; elaborated on the persons, events, and places described; and enriched the work with historical detail unknown when Pickett was writing. The work has also been fully indexed for the first time. The new edition, which carries an introduction by Dr. Pate, combines the two volumes in one and is presented in an attractive and readable wide format: Pickett’s original text and his own footnotes occupy the main part of the page, with annotations in boldface given in the margins. The result pays homage to a book that was described when it appeared nine years before the Civil War as “one of the prettiest specimens of book making ever done in America.” In an article from Alabama NewsCenter, Pate details the importance of republishing Pickett’s History: “For anyone writing about the state of Alabama — and especially the colonial, territorial, or the protohistoric record — Pickett is a very critical source that is not readily available.” (https://alabamanewscenter.com/2018/10/10/picketts-history-alabama-re-released-month/) Praise for the work has come from many quarters. Dr. Ed Bridges, the former director of Alabama Department of Archives and History, graciously calls The Annotated Pickett’s History of Alabama “its own historic event.” Dr. Pate is one of a dozen writers and historians selected by the Alabama Bicentennial Commission (AL200) to speak about topics related to our state history in this Bicentennial year (https://www.al.com/life/2019/02/alabama-bicentennial-13-authors-to-offer-insights-on-state.html).

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The discussion on reparations for slavery and civil rights violations in America has perhaps never reached such a fever pitch as it is during the 2020 election cycle. Just this week, 2020 nominee Cory Booker and author Ta-Nehisi Coates testified before Congress on the necessary justice that reparations would bring to the African American community and the lasting legacy that slavery has in America today. Joining this roiling discussion is Ken Woodley, former editor of the Farmville Herald in Virginia and author of The Road to Healing: A Civil Rights Reparations Story in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Woodley campaigned for civil rights reparations in Prince Edward County after learning that the county closed their public schools in reaction to the Brown vs Board decision. Woodley’s crusade resulted in a state-wide scholarship program for those who had their right to education taken from them, a victory that Julian Bond called the first real civil rights reparations in the United States. Since the release of his book in April, Woodley’s account has brought him into the international conversation on reparations. Woodley’s perspective has been featured on Joshua Johnson’s 1A; the Community Watch program on D.C.’s WPFW; Detroit Today; The News & Advance in Lynchburg, Virginia; and The Richmond Times Dispatch. Woodley was also a guest of honor at a panel featuring former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder hosted by the Democratic Party of Virginia and held at the Black History Museum and Cultural Center in Richmond, Virginia. The panel is dedicated to Barbara Rose Johns, a community organizer in Prince Edward County and key figure in The Road to Healing. Woodley’s take on reparations was internationally considered in Le Monde alongside the likes of Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris. The passion for justice and reconciliation that Woodley holds should be viewed as a basic civil duty, and we commend Woodley for his dedication.

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